


In time I know I can always say (I’m alright, I’m okay)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Coda, Danny "Danno" Williams is a Good Friend, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s10e07 Ka 'i'o (DNA), Gen, so do pancakes, the team and charlie and eddie all show up briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 09:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21505555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “Define okay for me,” Steve says, broken open and hurting, and Danny thinks, sure, okay. He can do that.Or: The road home is easier to walk if there’s somebody to nudge you in the right direction.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams, Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 10
Kudos: 211





	In time I know I can always say (I’m alright, I’m okay)

**Author's Note:**

> This immediately got jossed by 10.08, and I have absolute zero problems with that because I think it’s wonderful they showed Steve grieving deeply after the events of 10.07, but, well. This was already mostly written, so let’s call this an AU, or maybe somehow missing scenes from before Steve started ignoring Danny’s texts.
> 
> This is one of those fics that could be read either as platonic (Danny & Steve) or as romantic (Danny/Steve), depending on how you choose to interpret their relationship, which is why I tagged it for both. The title is from Dianne Reeves’ song _I’m Okay_.

“Define okay for me,” Steve says, broken open and hurting, and Danny thinks, sure, okay. He can do that.

*

Danny does not sleep on the couch, because that would be taunting his own aging body into annoying him for the next week. So when Steve, lying perfectly still on his back, suddenly starts talking (“Doris. Doris! _Mom-_ ”), Danny is too close not to wake immediately. He waits it out until Steve startles awake on his own, blinking dazedly when he sees Danny’s face. There’s obviously some disorientation, but Danny knows it’s still better than it would have been if he had tried to pull Steve out of his dream by force.

“Hey,” he says. “Wanna talk about it?”

It’s not exactly a shocking turn of events when Steve’s expression closes off and he shakes his head.

Danny nods. “Okay.” He nudges a blank-looking Steve into sitting up enough to be handed the glass of water Danny had put on the night table before going to bed. 

After Steve downs it, he looks a little better, his shoulders a little less hunched. “Thanks,” he says. He sounds mostly normal, considering the situation. 

“Don’t mention it,” Danny tells him, and Steve follows this advice by lying down and falling back asleep before Danny even closes his eyes.

*

In the morning, Danny somehow wakes up first. He goes for a shower and when he exits the bathroom feeling more human than he has since he got off the plane yesterday, Steve is sitting on the edge of the bed. He either just woke up or has been staring at nothing for a while.

“You need to shower,” Danny tells him. 

Steve snaps out of whatever funk he’s in and looks up. The tilt of his brow is ironic. “Wow, thanks.”

In response, Danny reaches over and doesn’t let himself be deterred by Steve’s attempt to lean away from him. He tugs on the wild hair at Steve’s jaw. Not hard, but enough to make a point.

Also enough to make Steve frown and rub his chin. “Hey!”

“You need a shave, too.” Steve’s hand goes to his own head, so Danny adds, “Not there. I like you with long hair, just not everywhere indiscriminately.”

Steve blinks at him.

Danny makes shooing motions in the direction of the bathroom. “Go now, okay? I’ll order us some room service and we can have breakfast when you look like a functioning member of society again. Or do you need me to shave your face for you?”

That’s enough of a threat to make Steve grab a clean pair of underwear and flee into the nearest room with a lock, which fortuitously happens to be the bathroom. Danny’s been around the block once or twice. He knows how to play this game.

*

“I went with pancakes,” Danny says, when Steve emerges from the bathroom after his Navy shower. It’s a good thing he needed more than three minutes to deforest his face, because otherwise he would have returned before room service had time to drop by. “Hope that’s okay.”

Steve heads for his bag first, dumps the clothes he slept in and takes out some fresh ones. He’s pulling his shirt over his head when he says, “Sure. Smells good.”

Danny considers this a positive on two counts. First, Steve is displaying an appetite, which is important, because his ridiculous brain and body need the fuel. Second, Steve is talking into his shirt, which is silly enough that he wouldn’t do it if he were feeling super depressed at the moment. He would have waited and looked sad and downtrodden for a bit first.

They’re not Danny’s pancakes, but he has buttered them before he hands Steve the plate. They are also, at Danny’s special and very polite request, banana chocolate chip. It’s all worth the generous tip he ended up giving when Steve takes the first bite, looks surprised, and very nearly cracks an actual smile.

*

As promised, Lou is waiting in the arrivals hall to pick them up when they land in Honolulu. What obviously bewilders Steve somewhat is the presence of Junior, Tani, Adam, Quinn, Kamekona, Flippa and even Jerry, who saw fit to take a break from novel-writing. Steve is hugged and patted on the back and decorated with leis so numerous that he ends up looking like a fresh spring meadow, which is why Danny takes pity on him and doesn’t even protest very much when Steve takes two of them and deftly slings them around Danny’s neck.

Well, it’s either pity, or because it displays a reassuring normalcy on Steve’s part.

This normalcy lasts right until they’re in the backseat of Lou’s nice family car, because that’s when Steve keeps throwing Danny _looks_. “Okay, what?” Danny asks, when it starts getting creepy. “Why are you looking at me like that, huh?”

“Did you tell them all to be there?”

“No, I did not.” And he didn’t. If he suggested to Lou, at some point, that maybe it would be nice to gather their entire ohana to welcome Steve back – and keep him from immediately getting on another plane and forcing Danny to go more places he has no interest in to lure Steve out of yet another hotel room – well, then that’s something entirely different. It’s not what Steve asked, so he doesn’t have to tell him.

Steve nods and weirdly switches to staring out of the window without pressing the issue, but Danny could swear that he sees the corner of Steve’s mouth twitch.

*

Steve’s reunion with Eddie is a joyful one. Eddie gets petted and Steve gets licked and there’s a lot of tail wagging and murmuring about who’s a good boy. “Okay, okay,” Danny says, after he’s witnessed five minutes of this. “Is there an end in sight to this lovefest, or do I need to give you two a moment?”

Steve smiles from behind Eddie’s ear. He’s ended up kneeling on his own living room floor, with Eddie cuddling up so close he made two attempts to climb in Steve’s lap before he had to acknowledge that he kept sliding off and just threw his weight against Steve instead. “Are you jealous, Danno?”

“No. You can make up for the cuddles you owe me later.” 

Steve turns his face more fully into Eddie’s fur and makes a huffing noise. There’s no way to be sure, but it very well might have been a laugh.

*

Two days later, Danny has Charlie, so of course they all end up having breakfast together. Junior is out somewhere, probably swimming laps around the island, which just makes Danny all the more glad Steve elected to remain at the McGarrett breakfast table, even if he’s alternately eating his own croissant and helping Charlie peel his apart layer by layer. Danny would say something about playing with your food, except they both seem to be having fun and they’re eating in between and there’s absolutely no good reason to put a stop to any of that. 

That’s why he doesn’t mean to interrupt when he gives the coffee can a shake, pours himself another half a cup and asks, “Steve, more coffee?”

Steve shakes his head. “Thanks. I’m okay.”

It takes a second to register. When it does and Danny snaps his head up, he finds Steve already looking at him, something peculiar on his face. Knowing; fond; a little cocky, fitting for the wise guy he thinks he is. Danny wants to roll his eyes, but his brain trips and he just grins.

Steve grins back.

Danny puts the can down, coffee long forgotten, and studies Steve’s face more carefully. He still looks tired, both mentally and physically, but no longer in a way that strongly suggests he could keel over without warning at any time. That’s monumental progress, but it’s not even close to the end goal Danny had in mind. “You sure?”

“Yeah, for now.” Steve’s grin dims. “It’s…”

“Hard?” Danny suggests, because it’s not like that’s a secret. Whatever Doris might have deserved in the grand scheme of things in the end, she has always gotten everything from Steve that he could possibly have given her, and that hasn’t changed now that she’s not around anymore.

Steve wags his head in a clear sign that’s not what he was looking for. “Getting better,” he offers. And then quickly, like he’s afraid of promising too much, “Slowly.”

“That’s okay,” Danny says, and now it’s Steve who is visibly half a second away from rolling his eyes, but that’s another thing which is fully okay. Under the circumstances, the sight of it is glorious. “There’s no hurry. We’ve all got time.”

Steve frowns, nods and clears his throat, and Danny charitably pretends that it doesn’t look like Steve’s about to tear up. It’s better for everyone that way, because if Danny thinks about it too much he’s liable to join Steve and then things will get truly awkward.

Charlie picks the perfect moment to interrupt. He reminds the adults of his presence by pushing both his plate and the newly open jar of strawberry jelly loudly in Steve’s direction over the table. “Uncle Steve, can you help me?”

Steve snaps back to attention immediately. “Sure, buddy,” he says readily, and proceeds to patiently spread a blob of jelly on every single piece of Charlie’s dissected and largely shredded croissant, handing each of them off to Charlie to be eaten when they’re done.

Danny pours himself the last of the coffee. He sits back and watches Steve and Charlie get their fingers sticky and sips from his mug, and thinks that not only does Steve have that definition he was looking for down pat, he even knows how to use the word in a sentence. And if he ever forgets again, that’s alright, because Danny is more than willing to play the part of walking dictionary as often as necessary.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Comments are even cooler than the freezing weather outside. ❤
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
